The government shutdown that began Oct. 1 is impacting multiple federal departments and one of those could be student’s financial aid.

Many students receive their funding from Federal Student Aid and they could be concerned about how this shut down would affect them in the short term.

“Allocations for financial aid happen well in advance,” said Beverley Madden Director of Marketing, Outreach and PR for College of San Mateo. “So there’s no immediate impact… If the federal government shuts down for weeks and weeks we would be fine because we’re on a state level and our funding has been decided a year out.”

According to the Department of Education’s contingency plan the funding to students will stay intact however almost 4,000 workers will be furloughed in order to keep the department going. Only necessary positions will be kept and this may cause delays in students receiving their money in a timely manner. This is only if the shutdown lasts for more than one week.

When contacting Skyline’s office of Financial Aid, The Skyline View was told that staff could not provide any information because of instructions they were given to direct all requests to the Dean of Enrollment Services, John Mosby. There were repeated attempts to reach Mosby on deadline and he was unable to return TSV’s calls and emails.

“Everything is the same at this point, right now,” said Rita Burton, Student Assistant at the Cañada College Financial aid office. “Tomorrow it might change and that’s up to whatever Congress and the senators might decide. We [students] have to go by whatever is happening in the news right now.”

For the days to come it is going to become increasingly important to watch and see how this shutdown will effect education. Especially when regarding the flow of Financial Aid funds to students with this 90% absence of Department of Education employees.

“We should all be pounding on these folks [congress],” Madden said. “Because we’re all taxpayers and they’re not doing their jobs.”

Update: the headline of this article was changed to better reflect it. 8:29 P.M. 10/3/13